$250 Million Worth of Fuss

The U.S. Department of Education released the final rules Thursday for the high-stakes competition called the Race to the Top. That’s the $4.35 billion in grants to be given out in the next year to spur states to take major steps aimed at improving a host of aspects of schooling, including the quality of teachers and the quality of education options open to children, especially those in historically low performing communities.

How much is at stake? Included in the material was a list of how much each state could potentially receive. For Wisconsin, the figure was $150 million to $250 million.

It is unlikely Wisconsin actually will get that much. It appears there are some points where Wisconsin will score well (atmosphere for creating charter schools), and other points where Wisconsin will not do well (track record on closing achievement gaps, such as the one between white and black students).

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Representation, Outcomes, and Fairness in Legal Proceedings

gideonAs my colleague Rebecca Blemberg recently blogged about, California has moved in the direction of recognizing a right to counsel for civil litigants with critical legal needs.

The concept of a constitutional right to counsel in certain civil cases is often referred to as “Civil Gideon,” after the Supreme Court decision that established the right to counsel in criminal cases, Gideon v. Wainwright. Critics charge that recognizing a civil version of the right established in Gideon will cause “waste” by increasing litigation. A recent Wall Street Journal law blog post quoted Ted Frank, for instance: “What is clear is that you will never have a simple eviction because every single one of them will be litigated. . . . The rest of the poor will be worse off because of that.”

I guess “waste” is in the eye of the beholder. As a student noted on another blog,

While I understand the drawback of added litigation, I’ve never found it to be particularly persuasive enough to override a law aimed at a greater level of fairness and justice. In most custody cases, an agreement is more likely reached when the party who can afford an attorney bullies the other party into signing something. As for eviction cases, I believe that at the end of a notice period, a landlord must file an eviction case with the court anyway to have the eviction legally recognized. Moreover, the American judicial system can be overwhelming, confusing and inevitably adversarial. While many civil parties successfully file suits pro se, I think it is fair to say that they often lack the knowledge and skills to successfully plead a case.

Indeed, it seems beyond dispute that pro se litigants are, on average, overwhelmingly disadvantaged by lack of representation.

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Bullying in Schools–Teaching Respect and Compassion Through Restorative Processes

450px-Bully_Free_ZoneAll too often, we see and hear people trying to intimidate others-whether it involves politics, religion, driving habits, employment, sports, family or any other topic that creates conflict. Rather than civil and respectful discourse on tough topics, many routinely call each other derogatory names and describe the other as “evil,” “Hitler-like” “self-centered,” etc. We see physical violence and harassment occurring regularly in schools, places of employment and even on our highways. Finally, the language people use on talk shows or in e-mails, blogs, and even tweets often is designed to intimidate, ridicule and even destroy those with whom the speaker or writer disagree. I consider that this conduct to be an attempt at “adult bullying”…trying to “win” an argument by physically or verbally attacking others who in good faith see a situation or issue differently.

For the last four years, the Marquette Law School Restorative Justice Initiative (RJI) has held very successful annual conferences on topics involving victims and restorative justice, the international application of restorative justice and two conferences on creating safe streets through restorative justice. Last year when the planning committee for our 2009 (RJI) conference met, we decided to focus on restorative practices that address bullying because many schools were asking our assistance in creating approaches to address a serious problem of bullying in both elementary and high schools. On November 10, we will present our “Bullying in Schools–Teaching Respect and Compassion Through Restorative Practices” conference at the Marquette University Alumni Memorial Union. Not surprisingly we “sold out” all 350 seats at the conference. Students, parents, teachers and social workers continue to struggle with how to address instances of student bullying through physical and verbal abuse not to mention the terrible phenomenon of what is happening on the Internet including the sending of nude student pictures to others. Our conference is designed to help people learn of better ways to promote respectful and civil dialogue in our schools.

Dr. Brenda Morrison, our keynote speaker, describes bullying in the school context this way:

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